In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Have I excused myself all these years of being so busy doing this and doing that? You can be busy doing good things. The truth is, I could stay busy 18 hours a day, 24 hours a day, doing very good things, even as a pastor, and ignore private time with Him and justify all of it. The only problem is it doesn't work. It is not working in your life. You are getting along, but you don't know what you're missing.

Guest (Male): What does your to-do list look like? Do you have more than one item on the first line? Today, on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, you'll get help doing some proper rearranging to keep Jesus where He rightfully deserves to be. Stay with us as God's Word teaches us more about life's number one priority. Here's Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Do you often feel the tension between doing what you want to do and what you feel like you should do? What areas of your life do you feel that tension the most often? How do you respond? Which one wins over the most? What you want to do or what you know in your heart you should do?

When you do what you want to do rather than what you know you should do, how do you feel? Do you feel guilty or defeated? How do you feel? When you do what you know you ought to do rather than what you want to do, how do you feel? Victorious, like you've conquered temptation? Do you feel good about yourself?

Life is full of decisions, and therefore life is going to be full of tension. Sometimes when these decisions are absolutely crucial in our life, we have two alternatives and one looks just as good as the other. We know that one is right and one is not right. What we want to do versus what we should do, and the tension is so strong. Oftentimes, we discover the strength of our heart and the strength of our life.

Since life is just full of those things, there is one of those areas that all of us have felt and do feel tension in our lives. It is something so very simple, but something so profound. It's the one area that has the most awesome impact upon our life of everything else. Yet you would think that after we've been saved for a while, we would have learned, and therefore there wouldn't be any tension in this at all. But there is.

That's the area that I want to talk about in this message. I want you to turn to the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. It's amazing how God could put so much truth in so few words in something as simple as this incident to identify for us what is the number one priority in the life of the believer.

If you should ask people what is the number one priority, you'd probably get lots of answers. But it's very clear in this passage, from Jesus' perspective, what is the number one priority in our life. He's just been talking about the Good Samaritan in this chapter. Beginning in verse 38, he says, "Now as they were traveling along," that is, Jesus and His disciples, "He entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations and she came up to Him and said, 'Lord, do You not care that my sister's left me to do all this serving alone? Then tell her to help me.'"

But the Lord answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, it probably would mean the same thing as dear, dear Martha, now you're getting all upset. You're worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary. For Mary has chosen the good part which shall not be taken away from her."

This is such an important passage of Scripture. These three primary people—Mary, Martha, and Jesus—provide a lesson. Jesus has gone to this home probably oftentimes. He's on His way to Jerusalem with His disciples, and He has decided to stop off at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus' home where He felt welcomed and He felt loved. In the process of doing so, an incident happens here in which He identifies for us what is the number one priority in our life.

Jesus was saying the number one priority in our life is our time we spend alone with Him. You have a priority in your life. Maybe you're the only person who knows what it is, but you have a priority in your life. The question is this: do you value your relationship with Jesus Christ enough to make time alone with Him the number one priority in your life?

Is He that valuable to you? Is He that important to you? Where does He rank in your life? If you don't give Him time alone with yourself, and He desires that for you, if you don't spend time alone with Him doing what she was doing—only we have the awesome privilege of having the Word—and that is meditating upon His word. That's how we learn from Him.

Listen to Him, learn from Him, longing in our heart to be like Him, desiring in our heart that His character would become our character, desiring that Christ would be manifest in our life. That is, that our life would be a living expression of His life. If we don't have any interest in spending time with Him, then He's not a priority.

Think about this. Jesus, who went to the cross and laid down His life for you, you mean to tell me you don't have time for Him? You don't have time to listen to Him, to learn from Him, and to love Him? What is it that really matters most? As you look at the Scripture, it's very evident that Jesus was saying to Martha that there are lots of things in life that are very important.

When you get down to pray, do you ever get distracted? Sure you do. You start thinking about things and you think, "Where did that come from?" Satan will do everything in his power to get you distracted from your relationship to Him. You can't spend time alone with the Lord with the TV on or whatever else.

People write us all the time and say, "When In Touch comes on, I take the phone off the hook. I don't answer the doorbell because I'm not going to be distracted." I wonder how many of us love the Lord that much. I'm not answering the phone. How many of you, when the phone rings, your first impression is to go get it?

If you're talking with the Lord, let me ask a question. What you're saying is, "I'm more interested in who this is than what He may be about to say to me." He's made it so simple, but it's painful to have to sit here and think, "God, do I love an hour and a half of TV more than I do You?"

Have I excused myself all these years of being so busy doing this and doing that? You can be busy doing good things. The truth is, I could stay busy 18 hours a day, 24 hours a day, doing very good things, even as a pastor, and ignore private time with Him and justify all of it. The only problem is it doesn't work. It doesn't work and you know it's not working in your life. You're getting along, but you don't know what you're missing.

The whole impact of this story is that there are always going to be those things that are good that intrude into our time. Those distractions will always be there. You're not going to ever reach the place where you can say, "Finally I got all the time I need." For those of you who are retired, you should be working and serving the Lord, but let's think about it. What do you hear from people who are retired? Here's what they say: "I retired and I am busier than I have ever been before."

Busy doing what? If you don't have to check in at eight o'clock in the morning, then you've made a choice in your priorities to fill up that time that God would now give you with something else. I'm not saying you shouldn't work diligently and do your best and be responsible. But what's first?

A long time ago, I realized that no amount of excuses to God about sermons, visiting, counseling, administration, all those things that are very important, no excuse will suffice. I can't say, "God, I am a pastor and I'm serving You and I don't have time." God says, "I won't have time to give you a sermon next week either," and that'll get your attention just like that.

Number one's number one in God's eyes. The biggest problem is going to be for many of you that for years and years, your priorities have not been God. For you to have to change is going to be tough because of habit. If you thought you were going to die tonight about six o'clock, what would be the number one priority in your life? Would it not be that you want to be sure everything is right between you and God?

God doesn't want to put us in that position. He just wants us to love Him enough that every day, we want to come to Him. We desire Him. We long to know Him. There'll always be those things that intrude, those things that disturb, those things that would grab our attention and our time if we let it.

If I start giving my best time, my first period of time, or I start giving the Lord time every day, what can I expect? What is the first thing that happens when you and I begin to spend time with Him? When we come before Him by ourselves and over an open Word and begin to ask Him to speak to our heart, first, He will quieten your spirit.

I don't care how stormy your circumstances are. It doesn't make any difference how difficult the situation is and what's going on in your life and who's on your case. When you get alone with Him, it is absolutely amazing how He can quieten your spirit, shut out everything else in the world, and it's just you and Him. That will quieten your spirit. He knows how to do that.

That's why David said, "My soul clings to Thee." He learned the secret. That's why he said he sat before the Lord and listened to Him and talked to Him. So number one, it quietens our spirit. That means whatever troubles, frustration, anxiety, fear, worry, He's going to take it away.

Secondly, we're going to sense renewed energy. I cannot explain it. I just know that when you get on your face or sit before the Lord and He's first, you shut out everything else and you begin to listen to Him and express your love and your praise. There is a divine energy that surges through this human body that physiologically, something happens.

I think Mary must have learned some of this because every time we see her, she's at His feet. So first, there's going to be a sense of quietness and energy. There are many other things. Number three, it's certainly going to strengthen your faith. I have seen this in listening to testimonies so many times when somebody, for the first time in their life, realizes that they knew God had spoken to them and given them an answer, or given them a sense of direction, or said something specific they knew it was from Him.

That surges your faith. This God who controls it all is willing to speak to you. He desires to speak to you. He will make it so crystal clear if you'll give Him the time. Not only that, but you're going to be refreshed in your emotions. He knows how to diffuse within our emotional being all that we need to fill us up.

Anytime I preach, I go home on a Sunday afternoon. I'm a little worn and a little weary. Enough to know that emotionally, God has squeezed everything out of me and I need to be replenished. I just get on my face and say, "Lord, You know what I need today. I just need a fresh new surge of Your fullness in my whole emotional being. I need You to feed my emotions and fill my cup once again."

He's sitting on ready, waiting to meet every single solitary need that we have. We say that He meets all of our needs and then we wonder why sometimes we don't have them because we don't give Him a chance. One thing that certainly will happen when you spend time with Him is that He will purify your heart.

I do believe that one of the primary reasons that most people will not get alone with the Lord and spend time with Him is because they don't want to face themselves. They've got baggage they don't want to deal with, sin in their life they don't want to face, and anxieties they can't deal with. Purification sometimes is painful, but the purifying work of the Holy Spirit in our life in the presence of our Lord is absolutely precious to any child of God who wants the Lord's best for their life.

Not only does it purify our heart, but something else I think that you will find is this: it is the greatest time-saver in life. I do not know a greater time-saver in life than the time you spend alone with the Lord. I would challenge anybody, anywhere in the world, if you're a believer, you spend time with Him and see what happens to your time. He will multiply those moments. He will multiply those minutes. He will multiply those hours. He will multiply those days.

You can't figure it out, it's just that you find yourself being more fruitful and accomplishing much more. The only thing you can credit it to is you spent time with Him. He's giving you direction for your life. Not only that, it also will give us insights and instruction from His Word we won't get any other way.

One of the most exciting things about the whole Christian life to me is to study the Word of God. Then, when I'm not even necessarily thinking about something that I've read, God says something to me so crystal clear out of the blue that absolutely goes straight to my heart. I know that God is speaking. He wants to say something to you. He wants to protect you, to provide for you, and to direct your life.

We get instruction and direction from His Word. Time you and I spend with Him prepares us for conflict. Spending time with Him oftentimes prepares us, quiets our soul, so that we are ready when something comes that would normally blow people off course. It does not affect us because we know who is in control of our lives. It prepares us for the storms of life.

Not only that, it anchors us for the storms. When you and I spend time with Him, it's like He anchors us to the truth. He's in control, He's in charge, He'll handle this, and all we have to do is to follow Him, be obedient to Him, listen to Him, and watch Him demonstrate His awesome power in our lives.

Certainly, when you and I are hurting, the place to go is to Him. When you're hurting and your heart's full of pain and you feel all alone, you don't have anybody else to go to, no one that you can tell those deepest thoughts of your life you've never shared with anyone, there's somebody you can tell and you never have to worry about whether He's confidential or not.

You can unburden your heart. You can lay it all out, and there's an awesome sense of comfort that you and I will never be able to understand. One last thing I would say is this: when you and I spend time with Him, there is a joy in our life that has its source in nothing else in the world. There's this overwhelming sense of deep, abiding joy that's deeper, stronger, and far more fulfilling than happiness. Happiness is dependent upon our circumstances; joy is dependent upon a relationship.

If spending time with the Lord will cause all of those things to happen in your life, can anybody, anywhere in the world, name me any other experience in life that will give you all of that? You cannot, because we're relating to the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us enough to go to the cross and die for your sins and mine, and then to send us the Holy Spirit to live on the inside of us to enable us to become godly men and women.

Father, we love You and praise You for giving us such a simple passage of Scripture, but so full of profound truth that absolutely can impact every single area of our life. I pray the Holy Spirit will sink this truth into every heart that hears it. Seal it tight. Let it take root. Let it bear fruit. May the fruit be transformed lives—people who love You, are devoted to You, listen to You, long for You, learn from You, and walk in Your ways. This is our prayer today in Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. We sometimes feel that there aren't enough hours in the day to spend quality time with God. But eternal life is a gift; it's His life to be lived His way for His glory. You can listen again when you click "Today on Radio" at intouch.org.

If you have questions about God, the Bible, or the Christian life, look around our website to connect with helpful resources that can challenge and strengthen your faith. If you'd like to have a copy of today's complete message, open our online bookstore to order it by title: "Life's Number One Priority." Again, that's intouch.org. You can also call or text 1-800-IN-TOUCH.

If you prefer to write, our address is In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. Who or what is first in your life? As we heard today, nothing should take priority over God. Today's moment with Charles Stanley is just ahead.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this: that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable relationship with a personal God.

Every businessman knows that there's always going to be a pile of work waiting. Every student knows there are more tests, more papers to write. Every mother knows that when she gets up in the morning, her work is never done. A mother never washes the last load of dishes, she never washes the last load of clothes, she never sweeps the floor the last time. It's always hanging in there.

If you're waiting till you can find time to spend time with the Lord, you can forget about that. There are enough issues and pressures in life. So what it all boils down to is: what's my priority? People come home in the afternoons, they eat their dinner, most people cut on the TV before the dinner even gets there, and they watch it while they're eating or afterwards, for an hour, two hours, three hours, whatever it might be.

The same people will say, "I just don't have time to get the Bible out and read a chapter in the Bible and pray and listen to God." It's not that you don't have time. I can't tell God I don't have the time because I do have the time. It's a matter of what's my priority in life.

Guest (Male): You'll find plenty of resources at intouch.org to keep you focused on the Lord every day. Is there someone who needs the truth you heard today? Share it with them and then tell us what happened. Next week on In Touch, social media invites people to vent their frustrations openly, but the Bible warns believers about the danger of anger. Be back Monday to learn how to put out the fires of hostility on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.